


One Taste and You'll be Mine

by bffimagine



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: (considering the length of the fic), Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Angst, Boys Kissing, Drama, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining Keith (Voltron), Pining Lance (Voltron), Romance, Slow Burn, Swearing, but do they know that?, cursing in more than one sense of the word
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-27
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-12-20 09:55:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11918415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bffimagine/pseuds/bffimagine
Summary: When Lance picks one of the most challenging potions known to the wizarding world as his final Potions project, he quickly realizes he has bitten off more than even a three-headed dog would be able to chew--things go very much awry. He ends up paired with Keith Kogane, star of the Gryffindor Quidditch team, just because Professor Snape is essentially the worst.By the way, did he mention that the potion he chose isAmortentia, the most potent love potion ever brewed?Yeah, it goes about as well as one would expect.(Also referred to as the fic where Keith needs some damn impulse control.)





	One Taste and You'll be Mine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thejalapeno](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thejalapeno/gifts).



> Title from "Black Magic" by Little Mix
> 
> No copyright infringement intended. I don't own anything!

Potions class was hard.

Lance sighed as his cauldron started bubbling and emitting screechy hissing noises as his brew changed from a pukey-green colour to a very incorrect, albeit lovely, rich royal purple. If it didn’t look so damn regal, Lance would’ve been a lot more disappointed about the probable failing grade this was going to earn him.

“What, pray tell, is _that_ , McClain?” Professor Snape sneered from somewhere over Lance’s left shoulder. Pidge sank into her seat a little as if she wanted to avoid being associated with Lance’s failure. He cut a betrayed look at her out of the corner of his eye. Rude… so much for the loyalty of seat-mates.

“It’s… er… it’s… um… it’s, uh, s-supposed to be _A-Amortentia_ , Professor,” he stammered. Merlin’s beard, Professor Snape scared the living daylights out of him.

Professor Snape sniffed derisively and his eyes rolled heavenward for a moment before he fixed Lance with a terrifyingly icy glare.

“Well, fortunately for you, this massive error on your part is, surprisingly, salvageable. You may still be able to fix your potion with the appropriate corrective techniques.” He held Lance’s eyes for a moment longer, and Lance felt his lungs shrivel in his chest.

“Kogane!” Snape barked. A mop of longish black hair jolted from somewhere in Lance’s peripheral vision. The guy’s sharp shoulders crept up to his ears as he hesitantly raised his head. Oh no...

“Yes, Professor?” Kogane answered coolly, the entirety of his posture shuttered tight.

Snape cleared his throat purposefully. “Kogane, you will assist McClain in this… mess… of his.”

Kogane’s mouth fell open. “But, I—”

“See to it that you succeed,” Professor Snape cut him off sharply. The other boy’s mouth snapped shut. “Your grade is now dependent on whether or not McClain turns in a passable _Amortentia_ tomorrow. He picked quite the challenge for you.”

The class was so silent Lance could hear his soul shattering in a distant astral plane. Well, if he was going to flunk seventh year Potions tomorrow, he would have a spare period for the rest of the year… then he’d have to somehow re-take the course before the new school year so he wouldn’t miss out on the application period for his thesis project in advanced Muggle Studies.

“Dismissed,” Professor Snape said, the word falling heavy like the clean slice of a guillotine. The class dispersed quickly, everyone scrambling to escape as fast as possible before someone else was saddled with a failure sentence. Professor Snape himself swept out of the room like a harbinger of death (wait, that didn’t even need to be a simile, that was pretty much true), leaving just Lance and his new Potions partner sitting at their brewing benches across the room from each other.

“Um, so, hi, I’m Lance,” he tried after a few moments of agonizing silence. Kogane just sat slumped in his seat, staring at his lax palms open on his lap in a catatonic daze.

“Hello? I’m Lance? Your… uh, your new partner?”

He watched Kogane’s throat work as he swallowed.

“Fuck.”

Okay, so that was the first word this guy was going to say to him?

“Uh, okay…”

“Fuck,” he repeated, this time throwing his head back and covering his face with his hands. Lance noticed a thin silver chain around the other boy’s wrist as it caught the light.

“So um… sorry about all this,” Lance started. Finally, the other boy moved his hands and unleashed the full fiery blaze of his glare. Lance refused to cower, but he may have needed to grip his brewing bench just a little tighter to keep his knees from quivering.

“How the hell is this supposed to be _my_ responsibility?” Kogane growled, and Lance frowned. Well, it wasn’t really _his_ fault, either! This was Professor Snape playing mind games with them.

“Hey, buddy, this is not exactly—”

Lance didn’t get to finish because Kogane was barreling toward him with alarmingly fast, silent footsteps. What, was this guy a poltergeist or something?!

“Listen,” he said, slamming a hand down beside Lance’s cauldron. It made some of the purple liquid slosh around inside. “I’m not the dumbass who decided to attempt an _Amortentia_ for my final Potions project, so this is _exactly your fault_.”

Lance avoided Kogane’s face, which had gotten a lot closer. He stared down at Kogane’s hands instead, which were partially covered by black fingerless gloves.

“Now we have to figure this shit out as soon as possible, because if I fail this class _because of you_ ,” he hissed menacingly, “I am going to lose every chance I had to—” his face abruptly slackened, “—whatever. We’re not failing this thing.”

Lance stood by as the guy pulled out a few bottles from the cabinet under the bench and carefully portioned out the purple fluid into three small flasks.

“We’ve got three shots at fixing this by tomorrow, so we’d better not waste them.”

Hm. That was actually kind of smart. Lance staunchly refused to be impressed.

“Okay, hotshot. Where do we start?”

\-----

So of course Keith fucking Kogane would be unwillingly lumped with Lance for this extra-credit-so-they-don’t-fail Potions final. Kogane was semi-famous for being one of the “best Quidditch players to ever grace Hogwarts’ halls in the last three centuries” and all that shit, and he was supposed to be on the fast track to becoming an Auror. Well, if Lance didn’t succeed in ruining his life and... all that shit. Fuck.

“Right, so that was definitely wrong,” Lance mumbled as they sniffed the very suspicious-looking result of their first attempt. It was getting close to midnight and the potion looked way more similar to badly-mixed black ink than the characteristic mother-of-pearl sheen of the strongest love potion known to the wizarding world. Lance sighed. Kogane said nothing (wait, was Lance allowed to call him Keith yet? They had been sitting here together for the past six hours, it must have warranted a first-name basis, right?), his face completely blank.

“Do we have enough ingredients to try attempt number two?” he asked robotically. The only thing that gave away his extreme annoyance was the slight twitch of his eyebrow.

“Um, I think we do if I go get the rest of my asphodel from my dorm room,” Lance replied meekly. Keith gave him a curt nod and Lance figured he was dismissed for the time being.

He scurried off to the Gryffindor dorms, sighing in relief when the Fat Lady granted him entrance. He gathered up his remaining stock of potion ingredients and took a moment to similarly gather his thoughts.

Keith Kogane was basically a legendary flier, and he was known to be a pretty gifted dueler. He had even beaten Takashi Shirogane, one of the recent Hufflepuff graduates who was the apple of every teacher’s eye (even Professor McGonagall had a soft spot for him, and that was saying… a lot). In fact, he’d beaten him every time they dueled, and that was certainly a miraculous feat, since Shirogane ended up being one of the youngest full-fledged Aurors in history to begin service.

Weirdly enough, Shirogane took a shine to Keith, a tiny, brusque, and abrasive first year at the time. They were pretty much inseparable for the two years that Shirogane had left at Hogwarts. Some of the other Gryffindors used to whisper curiously about it, and some of the Slytherin girls would comment behind Keith’s back that he was a lovesick Gryffindor lion cub trailing after the Hufflepuff prefect. (To think, Pidge had somehow ended up in Slytherin instead of Ravenclaw like her brother, where Lance had been sure she’d be sorted. Then again, he also thought Hunk would’ve been in Ravenclaw, but soon came to realize his best friend was a Hufflepuff through and through… besides, Slav was in Ravenclaw and he drove even saintly Shirogane nuts, so maybe it was best that his pre-Hogwarts social circle hadn’t ended up in that house.)

He sighed and dragged a hand down his face before rushing back to the Potions room in the flickering candlelight of the hallways. Lights out was technically an hour ago, but as long as Lance was able to avoid Filch it’d probably be fine.

“Took you long enough,” Keith muttered under his breath. Lance chose to brush that off since it was late, he was tired, and he just wanted to get this over with.

Their second attempt was also a failure, and it was two hours past midnight. Lance wanted to cry. He had three classes before Potions the next day and hadn’t done any of his pre-readings for them yet, and he _still_ didn’t have anything that remotely passed for an _Amortentia_.

“Fuck,” he sobbed into his folded arms, sagging into them with the cauldron spitting droplets that solidified on contact with air, dropping to the ground like hard little beads. They were actually kind of pretty, he thought deliriously—they looked like transparent, perfectly spherical emeralds.

Keith’s mouth was a flat white line. He was biting down on his lips so hard Lance could see a smear of blood welling up in the corners.

“We have one last chance,” Keith growled, eyes alight with either inspiration or sheer madness. They were bloodshot and likely felt like sandpaper under sticky eyelids, and Lance was sure he was in a similar state.

“I’m sorry,” Lance muttered weakly. Keith paused in his furious chopping of mandrake root, his shoulders stiffening and then drooping like a sad rabbit’s ears.

“It’s not your fault,” the other boy said in a rush of released tension. “I can’t really blame you for Professor Snape’s vendetta against me.”

Lance turned his head so his cheek was resting on his wrist, arms still folded over the surface of the brewing bench and cauldron scraped clean with an effortless wave of Keith’s wand. The emerald beads were all swooped up and deposited in a jar Keith pulled out of his book bag. He sealed it and pushed it toward Lance. The beads were gorgeous, even if they were the result of a failure of horrific proportions. It was kind of nice in a symbolic sort of way—from the ashes of fuck-ups came beautiful accidents.

“What does he have against you, anyway?” Lance probed, and then quickly smacked his hands over his mouth. Shit! If he wanted Keith to immediately clam up and never speak to him again, well, he had probably just passed with flying colours…

Shockingly, Keith snorted and just tossed a few things into the last aliquot of Lance’s messed up potion. It gurgled happily as he wiped at his hairline with the back of his wrist.

“It’s kind of a long story,” he said airily, like it wasn’t some deep, dark secret at all. “I may have… done some stuff. After Shiro graduated, I was kind of… lost, I guess.”

His eyes got this faraway look in them and Lance had never understood the feeling of being lost until he couldn’t figure out where that violet gaze ended and his entire being began.

“It was dumb luck I ended up here, and Shiro was the only person who refused to give up on me. So when he was gone, I felt like I had no… purpose. No goal here.”

He stirred absently and the potion began to rapidly change from dark purple to an effervescent pink. He hummed and sprinkled something else in. Lance wasn’t really paying attention to the potion at this point.

“But then he sent me his first letter since he left, and I just… I wanted something again. I wanted to get out there and do what he was doing. I found a new reason to move on with my life, because it meant making my way back to—well, I was able to turn things around, but not before I had maybe done some very insubordinate things and Professor Snape happened to be the one to catch me.”

Lance didn’t acknowledge the way his heart fluttered and sank simultaneously.

“So you’re really in love with the guy, huh?”

Keith’s nightshade brows drew together. “What?”

“Shirogane,” Lance clarified, voice lilting dreamily even though everything in his chest felt like it was made of lead and stone. “You must really be in love with him.”

Keith spluttered, hands stuttering out of their smooth stirring movements. “What? No! Of course not! That’s not the way we—what the hell, Lance?!”

Lance couldn’t help but perk up. Keith actually knew his name! Or at least paid attention when he introduced himself! That felt like an inexplicable victory.

Their eyes met over the merry simmer of the cauldron, and the room was suddenly filled with the delicate fragrance of phoenix down and desert flowers, smoky-sweet like olfactory gold.

“Do you smell that?” Keith whispered, first to snap out of their impromptu staring contest. Lance nodded dumbly.

“Yeah,” he whispered. He traced the curve of Keith’s jaw with his eyes. “It’s… pretty.”

Keith’s lashes fluttered as he inhaled deeply. “It’s like... ocean breezes and summer rain,” he said, eyes still closed. Lance admired the dark fan-shaped shadow on his pale cheekbones.

The potion certainly had an aroma, and clearly it was different for the two of them. Did that mean—?

They peered curiously at the potion together. Its surface was glassy, almost mirror-like, with a slight iridescent sheen though it was very obviously not like mother-of-pearl, and there were no swirly wisps of steam.

“It’s… not _Amortentia_ ,” Keith frowned.

“Maybe… maybe it’s still passable though?” Lance said hopefully. The sun was peeking up over the horizon and casting a soft glow over everything in the room, bathing Keith’s sharply defined features in a gilding of warmth and light. They were both obviously hesitant to tamper with the potion further since this was the closest they’d gotten to success, and it was also their only chance left.

“Maybe. It’s all we’ve got. Let’s get it out of your cauldron, we have to get ready for classes now anyway.”

The liquid had reduced so far in the brewing process that there was only enough to fill a medium-sized vial. Keith made sure to scrape every last drop out of Lance’s cauldron and reverently placed the stopper into the mouth of the glass.

“Well, here it is. Don’t lose it or break it, McClain.”

Lance wrapped the vial up in several layers of parchment, cradling it carefully in his cupped hands.

“Wouldn’t dream of it, Kogane.”

They grinned at each other for one magical moment before the rustle of owl feathers alerted them that breakfast was likely starting in the Great Hall.

“See you around,” Keith said with a wave.

Lance waved back jauntily, still deathly afraid to jostle the vial too much in its parchment cocoon. “See you,” he replied.

\-----

“That,” Professor Snape said disdainfully, “is _not_ even remotely close to _Amortentia_.” There was a sinister sort of glee in his eyes that, frankly, made Lance want to simultaneously burst into tears and maybe soil his trousers.

“It must be passable!” Keith argued, muscles in his jaw tightening under his skin. Lance could see how hard he was clenching his teeth.

“I think I am the one qualified to make that judgment, Kogane,” Professor Snape admonished coldly. Keith’s nostrils flared as he tried to take a calming breath. “You’d do well to remember that, from time to time.”

“Then let me prove it,” Keith blurted out, grabbing the vial and uncorking it in one enviably graceful movement. The liquid had gone crystal clear between this morning and being shaken around in Lance’s book bag despite his best efforts (he had almost died of despair when he saw it, thinking the vial had leaked or broken and it was actually empty. He nearly sobbed with relief when he realized there was still fluid in it). There almost looked like glittering diamonds suspended in it, catching the light every so often and shining brighter than stars.

The fragrance quickly wafted through the room, and Lance saw one of Professor Snape’s eyebrows rise steadily. The other students in the room shifted a little closer, curious despite themselves.

Even Pidge, who had defected to sit next to Hunk that day, was sitting up a little straighter. Of course, she had a perfect vial of _Felix Felicis_ sitting in front of her as her final project.

“It smells so lovely,” Lance heard a girl giggle to her friend behind him. “Like strawberries and rose water.”

“What are you talking about?” another girl responded. “It smells like cocoa and orange peel.”

Suddenly the class erupted in a buzz of chatter and even some small arguments.

“Lemons!” “Cherry blossoms!” “Sandalwood!”

“ _Silence_.”

The sound died in an instant. Professor Snape’s eyes narrowed as he looked from Keith to Lance to their fragile little vial held daintily in Keith’s fingertips.

“If you are so inclined, Kogane,” he said, tone silky smooth and more venomous than a viper, “then indeed you shall _prove it_.”

Keith’s tongue darted out to wet his lips. He inhaled sharply, eyes flickering to Lance’s. Lance was frozen in terror. What if they’d actually made a poison the likes of which only the Ministry of Magic would have possession? What if it set Keith on fire from the inside-out? What if… what if…?!

Lance lunged for the vial, and Keith’s eyes widened for a fraction of a second before he swiveled away and tipped the contents into his mouth lightning fast. Lance could only stare, horrified, as Keith swallowed forcefully.

When violet eyes blinked open, they immediately focused on Lance.

“I’ve never met anyone as beautiful as you,” Keith said softly, and Lance was pretty sure his jaw hit the brewing bench as it basically unhinged in his shock.

“I could spend the rest of my life waking up to your voice.”

Oh Merlin’s beard and Dumbledore’s spectacles, this was going to be horrendous.

If Professor Snape was as dumbfounded as the rest of the class, he certainly did not show it. He cleared his throat and everyone sat up a little straighter in their seats and, except for Lance, they politely closed their gaping maws.

“Alright then,” he said in clipped syllables. “McClain, Kogane, you’ve earned your passing grade. Now get that lovesick fool out of my sight.”

Lance was pretty sure he squeaked when he choked out, “Yes, sir,” and hurriedly dragged Keith out of the room while their classmates gawked at them. Keith wiggled his wrist out of Lance’s death grip and shifted so he could interlace their fingers. Lance’s face was on fire and his heart was racing a mile a minute—he had to get Keith to Madame Pomfrey, _now_. There had to be an antidote or something!

“Takashi told me that I should just tell you how I feel, but I was always too scared,” Keith said, words spilling from his mouth like a wide-open faucet and Lance could tell by the way he looked progressively more anxious that he had no control over them whatsoever.

Finally Keith let go of Lance’s hand, dug his heels into the ground, and clapped both palms over his mouth, eyes wide and panicked. He looked at Lance like he wasn’t sure if he was pleading for help or begging him to leave him alone.

For a moment, they just stood there in the middle of one of the hallways, twenty minutes or so from the end of classes, staring in a mixture of awe and mortification at one another.

“Fuck,” Lance heard Keith breathe before the other boy was gone, the last visible trace of him being a flick of a ruby-coloured tail.

Okay, holy shit, Keith Kogane was an Animagus. And his other body happened to be a (very small) fucking _phoenix_?!

Oh Merlin’s fucking beard...

\-----

“Uh, so, I think you figured out that what you guys made was NOT _Amortentia_ ,” Pidge supplied helpfully (not). They were crowded around one of the more secluded tables in the library. Fortunately, when Matt graduated, he had passed along his infinite wisdom of all the best places to study (or at least to goof off quietly without anyone noticing…).

Lance groaned miserably into his arms. It had been two days since the disastrous Potions class that still made Lance want to vomit when he thought about it. Not a single person in the castle had seen hide (literally… if that was what birds had under their feathers) nor hair (also literally) of Keith Kogane since that day, and finals for other classes were rapidly approaching. Lance couldn’t help but fret about his own exams, even though Charms and Defense Against the Dark Arts were his soonest and also strongest subjects (other than Muggle Studies), and he still had loads of time before he had to really hit the books for Herbology. Pidge and Hunk had a Care of Magical Creatures exam first, and were both so familiar with the material they were really just in the library because they had to feed their own thirst for knowledge and figure out what exactly Lance and Keith managed to concoct to pass at Potions but fail so miserably at life. See, this was why Lance thought they should be Ravenclaws.

“Whatever you guys made, I want to figure out how you did it, perfect it, and use it to destroy my enemies.” (Okay, so maybe it wasn’t such a mystery as to how Pidge ended up in Slytherin…)

“I’d argue it might’ve been stronger than _Amortentia_ ,” Hunk gushed, poring over a few thick tomes about ancient potions no one really knew how to make or use properly anymore. “Keith went from not knowing who you were to looking like he wanted to kiss you in front of the entire class!”

Lance groaned again, hiding his face.

“Wait,” Pidge piped up, “wait wait wait wait _wait!_ Lance… this is exactly what you wanted, isn’t it?”

She slyly pushed her glasses up a little higher on her face. Lance’s head shot up and he squawked indignantly, “No! Of course not! I wouldn’t wish this on my greatest enemy!”

Pidge smirked. “Right, so of course you wouldn’t wish this on the one person you’ve idolized since first year, so much so that you made it your life’s mission to beat him at something and figured it’d be through making a super complex potion for your final? Just because you wanted to ‘show that mullet-jerk up’?”

Lance completely regretted so many life choices at that moment, mostly the one where he decided to befriend Pidge. She was worse than a herd of Cornish pixies.

“I was just… being an idiot, okay? I wasn’t thinking straight.”

“No duh,” Hunk rolled his eyes fondly at the same time that Pidge deadpanned, “You have a crush on a boy, Lance.”

“Merlin’s beard, Pidge! I do NOT have a crush on Keith! And all of this—whatever happened was just a result of the fact that we accidentally fixed my potion somehow and against all odds, it worked. Now Keith _thinks_ he’s in love with me and we have no idea where he is so we can reverse it!”

Pidge’s eyes softened. “But Lance, this could be good! Do you really want to reverse the potion’s effects?”

Lance’s features crumbled. “Yes! Yes, why wouldn’t I? Why wouldn’t I want to give up the one chance I have at _pretending_ that Keith and I could _be_ something? I know it’s all an illusion. It’s the potion talking, not him.”

He burrowed his face into Hunk’s shoulder. Hunk rubbed comforting circles over his shoulder blades.

“It’s the potion that’s in love with me, not him.” He knew he sounded dangerously close to crying, but Matt hadn’t scoped out the best spots in the library for nothing. There was no one around, and the three of them had complete privacy as Lance broke down into a tearful disaster.

\-----

“Lance, can we talk?”

Lance startled so violently he almost thought he had sheared his soul from his body and floated through the Bloody Baron. Turned out the Bloody Baron had actually just phased right through him (which was a very slimy, cold, and invasive feeling). Keith retracted his hand from Lance’s shoulder so fast Lance almost thought he’d imagined the hesitant touch.

“Y-yeah, for sure,” he said, smiling shakily. Keith’s eyes were large and luminous in the low light in the library. Lance had been hiding out there since his last exam, pretending to be studying for Herbology but really just staring listlessly into space and trying not to let the guilt and disappointment devour him completely.

Keith slid into the chair opposite Lance at the square table, and he perched on the very edge of it as if he needed to be ready to make a hasty escape. Lance didn’t blame him—he was probably just as much a flight risk.

“So… so um… the potion's effects wore off just in time,” Keith said into the wood grain of the table, “I didn’t have to go into any of my exams with a complete lack of verbal filter.”

“Oh, I’m glad,” Lance said hollowly, not really knowing how to respond. He studied Keith’s face until the other boy’s gaze lifted from the surface of the tabletop, at which point he averted his line of sight.

“Yeah.”

They both shifted uncomfortably in their seats. Keith moved to cross his opposite leg over top and Lance fidgeted with the hem of his sleeve.

“I’m sorry if I… said stuff that uh, made you… uncomfortable,” Keith whispered. Lance steeled himself for what he knew was coming next.

‘ _I didn’t mean any of it_.’

“—I didn’t think we would have accidentally made a variant of _Veritaserum_ , of all things.”

Lance tried to focus on remembering to breathe while his heart broke into a million piec—wait, _what_?!

“Wait, _what?!_ ”

Keith worried his bottom lip between his teeth and leaned a little further back in his chair, obviously needing a bit more distance between him and Lance.

“The potion? It was… I had to stay in my phoenix form for almost three days waiting for the potion’s effects to wear off, because otherwise I was spilling my guts to anyone who asked me a question.”

Lance openly gawped at Keith in awe.

Keith coughed awkwardly and stood up.

“So um… I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have… I didn’t mean for you to feel weird about… I mean, I wouldn’t have said all that if... I never planned on telling you—”

“You _love_ me?” Lance interrupted. His voice was borderline hysterical.

Keith’s lip seemed to quiver a bit. He swallowed hard before he croaked, “Y-yeah.”

“ _You love me_?”

Keith’s face scrunched up (adorably) in a mixture of annoyance and despair that he was trying desperately to tip more in favour of annoyance.

“Yes, you asshole. Since our first fucking year, when the Sorting Hat said you’d be in my house.”

Lance just stared at him. Keith hastily grabbed his book bag (when had he even put that on the floor under the table?) and tried to run away, but Lance caught his elbow.

“Wait! Don’t, I…”

Keith looked back at him expectantly, but his eyes were glazed over with tears. He looked like he was just barely holding back a sob by sheer stubborn force of will.

“What?” he spat.

Lance shrank back, letting go of Keith’s sleeve. Keith snatched his arm back quickly, chin jutting up so his gaze did not waver from Lance’s.

“I—me too. I mean, from the first day, when you sat beside me on the train and drew pictures of the desert.”

Keith’s face morphed from defensive opposition to pure shock.

“You… you remember that?”

Lance took a bold step toward him. Keith didn’t try to move away.

“Of course I do, idiot. I asked if you were drawing the beach and you called me a dumbass.”

Keith’s cheeks coloured. “I’d never seen a beach before, I was just being a little shit because I was embarrassed.”

Lance chuckled wetly, taking another step forward and letting his fingertips trail down Keith’s triceps until he was cupping his elbows. Keith gripped Lance’s forearms, knuckles white in the rectangular windows of his fingerless Quidditch gloves.

“I was already missing home and the sand you drew reminded me of Varadero.”

Keith’s lips quirked into a wobbly smile. “Wow, okay, so I was a jerk as a kid. I get it.”

Lance leaned forward and let their noses gently bump against each other.

“No, I don’t think you do.”

His heart was jackhammering against his chest wall as he closed his eyes and subsequently closed the breath of space between their lips. Keith’s were warm and slightly chapped against his own, but his skin smelled like phoenix down and desert flowers.

“Get it now, Kogane?”

“Oh, shove it, McClain.”

They kissed again. And again. And again, until they were both crying and laughing and they ended up getting kicked out of the library for making too much noise.

\-----

“Takashi!” Keith scowled as Shirogane gleefully read his old letters to Lance.

“ _He doesn’t even know I exist_ ,” Shirogane recited in a falsetto that sounded nothing like Keith, but was making Lance’s sides ache with laughter. “ _I feel like I could be the golden snitch and he’d still never realize I’m alive_.”

“Shit, Keith, you write like a shoujo anime character,” Lance cackled. Keith made an expression that was too close to a pout to be a real frown and crossed his arms… crossly.

“I hate you both so much.”

Shirogane smirked and pinched Keith’s side, which made him jump. Lance laughed and took the opportunity to slide his arms around Keith’s waist from behind, nudging his nose into the warm space where Keith’s jaw met the curve of his neck, drawing in a lungful of the smoky-sweet scent there while Keith helplessly melted into the embrace.

“I know you do, sweetheart, but please try to refrain from hexing Shiro in his sleep tonight, okay? You both have hardened criminals to detain with possibly excessive use of force tomorrow, because you Aurors have absolutely _zero chill_.”

Keith rolled his eyes but turned in Lance’s arms anyway, rising up on the balls of his feet to press a kiss to his carotid pulse.

“It’s only excessive if they’re _weak_ ,” Keith grumbled.

Lance let his laugh tangle in the midnight strands of Keith’s hair.

“Okay, honey, no need to get me worked up while Shiro’s in the room.”

“Fine. Time for you to Dis-apparate your ass out of here, Takashi.”

**Author's Note:**

> I have always wanted to write a Harry Potter!AU/Hogwarts!AU but never really had an idea of what I'd write. Then a plot happened and I had this internal pressure to write it all at once...
> 
> Feel free to hit me up on Tumblr (bffimagine.tumblr.com), I'd be happy to hear thoughts, comments, suggestions, or prompts!
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
